Wetta Bradshaw sat watching the sun settle down into the Pacific ocean. She sipped her Scotch. It burned - badly. This was not the good stuff. This was not the same bottle she had shared with her husband the day he was accepted to law school. But it was the same brand. A cheap bit of a reminder to their earliest taste of success. It had only gotten better from there.
They had carved out a fortune for themselves so great they could never hope to spend it all. Money had been their motive to begin with - they both thought this. But it wasn't - not really. It was the thrill. They were good at it. Nobody knew anything about the illegal empire they were building for themselves. And then, by the time the whispering had begun, they were so powerful, so rich, so entrenched in the lives of all those others who thought they were powerful, that's all it ever was - whispers.
There had been so much money, so many enterprises, such a kingdom, that there had to be an heir - Sebastian Amos Bradshaw. He was a beautiful baby. Seldom cried. Started sleeping through the night early on to his parents' delight. He smiled often - that toothless baby grin that seduces the unsuspecting into the expecting. He was a beautiful boy.
He had been so bright too. In the third grade he had tested so well that the school had wanted to skip him ahead - to high school! She had consented to only jump ahead to the 6th grade. He promptly failed miserably - much to his father's chagrin.
She knew better. She had smiled at it. All his friends were in the 3rd grade. They let him rejoin his old classmates at the start of their fourth grade year. His grades and scores never once ticked above average from that point on. He would slip every once and a while and reveal that stunning brilliance when dealing with a teacher who was a bit too puffed up and proud. Or a martinet. He found ingenious ways to humiliate tyrants masquerading as teachers.
He took to poker like he had played in the womb. And maybe he had in a way. God knows his mother sat at a few tables while caring him. She did not really believe that he had inherited her ability to read people, to manipulate people - that just wasn't possible - was it? Deep, deep down, way past any kind of rational thought, she felt that she had bequeathed him this very gift - always be THE authority in whatever place you found yourself in.
The incident with Clay Diamond had shown her that he was almost exactly like her. Do anything, be anything, dare anything to win. Win or die. That was how she had lived her whole life. And she saw that he was going to play the game by her rules too. She let him keep that money. But she made him pay with what she did to Diamond. Lessons had to be taught.
This last thing though. Going after the Farfenelli money. She was content to let that mystery stay a mystery. No one else was looking for it. No one else would have been as much of a threat with that kind of power. But her son? Her son who hated her? Her son who played the game by her rules? That could be a dangerous situation.
And the people he had gathered to help him. The twins, the red haired girl, Farfenelli's daughter and that horror story of a half brother of his - he was gathering up too many pieces. He had to be stopped. Had to be stopped. And he had to be taught yet another lesson.
What better way than to force him to kill one of his own? Once he killed his brother the red hair girl or the twins or all three would have come after him. He would've had to put them all down. An abject lesson in what happens when you go up against Wetta Bradshaw.
Wetta is the one that no challenges. She always has an angle. She always has a plan. And her plans always end with somebody dead. Always.
Wetta Bradshaw sat and watched as the Pacific ocean grew dark and black. She sipped her cheap Scotch. And she refused to cry.
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